Book Bans - or Are They? | Free Speech Unmuted

Рет қаралды 13,910

2 ай бұрын

When public school libraries remove books based on the views expressed in the books, are they violating the First Amendment? What if the librarians stocking the shelves have a political agenda? It all comes down to a precedent called Pico, and Eugene and Jane disagree about which Supreme Court justices got the rule right.
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Eugene Volokh is a visiting fellow(soon to be senior fellow) at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he has been a professor at the University of California - Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (7th ed., 2020) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the US Supreme Court.
Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer’s research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer’s research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Two experienced professors of First Amendment law talk about current free speech controversies.
For more information, visit www.hoover.org/publications/f...
Related Resources:
Board of Ed. v. Pico (1982), scholar.google.com/scholar_ca...

Пікірлер: 18

@carolinekirby1587 2 ай бұрын

Having an age appropriate reading list at school is not the same as banning books!

@nicmart 2 ай бұрын

No, it's censoring access to books. I may agree with you about what should be censored, but it is censorship. Who's view should prevail in a tax-funded institution?

@davidlittle6621 2 ай бұрын

Interesting, but this discussion didn't realy focus on banning books, it only kind of focused on who should decide what books should be in school (for the most part) libraries and who gets to decide. Parents should have a major role in deciding what their children are exposed to.

@nicmart 2 ай бұрын

What books, specifically, are banned and by whom?

@PieterHanja Ай бұрын

With the new 10 Commandments from the Church Leaders; what will be the new consideration for the near future? What will be the new view of the Vatican about Law and Books?

@vrkoven Ай бұрын

An interesting discussion on an obviously complex issue of First Amendment law. One aspect of the acquisition/removal distinction that wasn't discussed, and which is possibly of some practical significance, is what happens when a book is acquired in contravention of a "rule of acquisition" (not speaking of Ferengi here!)? If a rogue librarian goes on an acquisition binge of books presenting a particular viewpoint when the rule was to balance acquisitions by viewpoint, does the school/board/public have any recourse? I suppose firing the librarian is one remedy (I agree with Prof. Volokh that it's a harsher remedy than merely removing the books, though in this case it would be warranted for the insubordination), but if the only solution is spending outside the acquisition budget to "even up" the viewpoint scoreboard, not to mention the agida of running the HR gauntlet when the wrath of PEN is invoked, the public is always given the short end of the stick. I for one don't think that books are holy objects that can't be touched once they're in place, especially when they are widely available outside the library. Even the Supreme Court gives itself permission to correct its mistakes.

@nicmart 2 ай бұрын

The libertarian view is that the issue of content-based restrictions on materials in government schools is unresolvable. The opinion of a librarian (or any other government employee), or of a majority (or aggressive plurality) in the community, should have no more weight than the opinion of one lone person. No person should be compelled to sustain a system in which materials are purchased, or not, that are at variance with the views of that individual. Private schools can do what they wish.

@dennisstrasburg7105 2 ай бұрын

The viewpoint needs to change. Libraries should furnish to the general public (if it is a tax-payer financed, public library) everything that is not blatantly (even idiots know) wrong or pornographic. They now sort books from non-fiction to fiction to how-to to self-help, etc., etc. You are mixing school, which went wrong a long time ago, involving children that should only be educated in non-judgement subjects, such as "How to do math." "How to spell and read words." Schools should not be teaching propaganda, or religion, or philosophy, or psychology, or any controversial subject. Taking responsibility and power away from parents through the manipulation of those who seek power, authority and demand that people only see it their way has gotten us into the mess we are in. This program was interesting as an adult of 80 years, but it is an issue only because of creeping corruption of values and responsibilities

@williamloy4828 2 ай бұрын

Fahrenheit 451

@johnl5316 2 ай бұрын

absolutely all books will not fit in a library, so choosing some excludes others

@woodchuck003 2 ай бұрын

You should reread Fahrenheit 451. I don't think they limited the books they burnt to books in elementary school libraries to contain scenarios of children being raped by their teachers.

@nicmart 2 ай бұрын

@@johnl5316 The irony of the "banned books" events at libraries is that librarians probably "ban" more books than any other group if the definition of banning employed by libraries is employed.